


Another Future END

by PirateQueenCatherine



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Bad Ending, Post-Canon, Sigma's a traumatised boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24161473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PirateQueenCatherine/pseuds/PirateQueenCatherine
Summary: [Virtue's Last Reward spoilers, some Zero Time Dilemma spoilers but very few!]An exploration of what Sigma did after the events of Virtue's Last Reward and Zero Time Dilemma D-END 1. That man's struggling.
Kudos: 18





	Another Future END

The motors that drove his arms were much more abrasively loud than Sigma remembered. Perhaps they were always like that, or perhaps he had fixed them at one point. They were, after all, not meant to be like that.

Nothing was meant to be like this. 

It was hard to have those words repeating through his head as the deja vu of this room struck him. A TV was playing against one wall, the sound quality muffled to a point where it sounds like slurred speech. Whether that was his hearing or the quality of the TV itself, he could not know. Along another wall sat pods, capsules that would act as beacons for yet another game. 

Another game that shouldn’t have to happen. 

Akane would walk in soon. Soon he would be ejected from this time, a sign that he had failed. A sign that more people would not just be dying now, as explosions went off, but that they would die in the future. There was a constant, gnawing feeling that he was responsible for the path humanity now walked.

Of course, he was not. The creator of Dcom was. Radical-6 was. But Sigma had already given up his, and other people’s, lives to the belief that he was right. How could he be so arrogant as to believe he could set right an apocalypse? 

Of course, He didn’t know. That child. He was so young and naive, forced through trauma as if he were a man. The child who had responsibility thrust upon him in such unavoidable circumstances. It felt like He was a different person, although by now, He was probably changed enough by the events that would be transpiring in Rhizome 9. Sigma could not bare to utter the boy’s name himself, for the guilt was too great.

By some definition, He had done this to himself, but Sigma knew that was not the right way to think about it. The man who pushed Him on this path was a very different one to the boy he was, and Sigma could feel nothing but regret for the upcoming years. Isolation, studies, loss, and the overwhelming grief of a planet that would die if he did not sacrifice his own years for a cause that perhaps was inevitable. It certainly felt inevitable.

When He arrived, though, what would Sigma do? Of course he would return, and apologise to everyone involved, but after that? He would be about to see Diana, or, Luna, again. He would grieve all over again.

And Kyle. And Akane. And Junpei. And Phi. Did they know he’d fail? How many times had he even done this, now, only to come to the same conclusion?

With Crash Keys, there had been a belief that we were, somehow, in the wrong place. Something had gone awry, and we would instead right those wrongs. Time travelling world fixers. 

With a sigh, having spent more than long enough pondering the mistakes of his life and the deaths he had caused, in this timeline and others, Sigma walked to the window of this cell-like room, one bolstered with steel and concrete in case of a blast. 

The blast was coming. A mushroom cloud, if he remembered correctly, although it happened 40 odd years ago in his mind.

It was all a bit tiring to think about. Memories of events yet to pass, hints of information he was not meant to know, a vague recollection of what was to happen next. Timeline bullshit, really. He did his best not to, even if that traumatic moment, where Akane would come through the door in strange robes and explain His part in all of this had been etched into his memory.

Every time Sigma tried to focus on something, his mind brought him back to these thoughts. 

He wasn’t sure when he’d be thrown out of this time. There was no precise moment when it would occur, only that it would be soon. It was to be the end for him. Of course he wouldn’t die, but it was a book closed. With clinks and dinks of steel hitting steel, he scratched his arm as if it were real. 

That prospect, of something being real or not, felt strange. He, and Akane, and everyone involved in these forsaken games had a perplexing concept of real. He had really died, he felt that happen, the barrel of a gun pressed against his temple, a blast of heat before his skull was forcibly opened and splattered across the floor. In another life.

It was all real. Every success and failure - but of course he always came back to the failure.

There was once an ideal of a true timeline. Of Crash Keys pushing humanity into its best self, utilising nature to undo our wrongs and create utopia, free of killing and viruses and horrific death games. 

But he always ended up here. A loop, where he’d now go back into the future, probably live another ten years, and die while humanity fades away under blackened skies or on an inhospitable rock, while his younger self would forever loop, always ending up back here.

And that was why he was arrogant. He believed this was not the true ending. That he did not deserve this, that humanity was better than this. That it could be prevented. 

Sigma lay down on the only normal bed in the room and stared up at the ceiling.

Perhaps He would be a little more optimistic.

\--------------

It was as if Sigma blinked and was immediately transported. Or perhaps it was more like when you try to remember the moments before you fall asleep, but can never pinpoint that exact moment when your brain shut up..He couldn’t really tell. 

But suddenly, he felt weak. He was back in what had been his home for decades. It was hard to tell whether the fact his body suddenly felt frail and weak was from the fact he had aged 40 years in the blink of an eye, or from the guilt of seeing Akane’s grey hair again. 

This, again, should never have happened. She hugged him all the same. 

“Thank you, Sigma.” 

They were now at the point after it all. He no longer had a goal to improve the past, he no longer had a purpose. Research, scientific breakthroughs in quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and sustaining human life on inhospitable planets, used up. 

The only future he previously considered was supposed to start 46 years ago. 

He wandered Rhizome-9 aimlessly, the people who now inhabited it were avoiding him. Most of them had no idea what they were participating in. 

He could not face Luna.

Kyle and Tenmyouji were talking in the airlock that would lead back to their home. The long way around, of course, a trip to Earth was not fast. Jun-

Tenmyouji.

Tenmyouji was telling a story about bikers. 

“Nine people then. What happens to the reality they were living? Does it just disappear when S changes the past? It's not as if it was only bad things that happened during that 10,000 mile trip. Maybe one of them fell in love with a woman working at a gas station they stopped at, and had a child. Maybe one of them picked up a homeless kid, who joined them on their adventure. That 10,000 mile journey would be full of stories. Friendships, farewells, romances.. The loss of those ninety lives is horrible and unfortunate, but what would re-writing their history mean? The nine who survived lived full lives. How can it be right to just erase all that?”

Sigma left before they noticed him. He had heard enough. 

Junpei always was smarter than he gave him credit for. 

\--------------

Phi smiled, and patted the seat next to her when Sigma walked past.

“I do prefer you without the sex jokes,” she teased.

With a less-forced-than-he’d-admit smile, he sat next to her. 

“Not all of us got to have a lie-in.” 

The smile never faded through that conversation. His mind wasn’t fully there, but the two of them had a shared experience that meant talking was easy. They say trauma does that.

“Sigma, you know this isn’t wrong, right?”

He was silent. She sat back and stared at the metal ceiling of the room they were in.

“We were never changing the past. That could never happen. As long as you and me are sat here, that was never possible. No amount of SHIFTing could have prevented the Radical 6 outbreak once it happened. There will always be a path through history where we did that.”

She was fondling her brooch absentmindedly.

“We would always end up here, somehow. No matter how much we SHIFT, there is no erasing history. There is only creating new futures. We just don’t get to be in them.”

Phi stopped after that, putting down her brooch. Leaving it beside Sigma, she stood up, and smiled at him. 

“Imagine how safe we all are in that future, huh?”

Phi left Sigma alone for a while.

“"Elapsam semel occasionem non ipse potest Iuppiter reprehendere,” read the brooch.

\--------------

She was, of course, right. SHIFTing doesn’t erase what has happened, as paradoxical as it feels. It creates something new. And yet there was still this cost. He felt stubborn to still be so guilty despite knowing full well Phi was right.

Hours passed. Tenmyouji and Quark left, on their slow trip back to a scorched Earth. Dio had finally woken up, but had become morose and quiet. Luna was returning Rhizome-9 back to its original state, before the Ambidex Game. Akane was setting up the transporter for the two SOIS girls when Sigma walked past Clover in the lounge.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted out.

Clover sighed. She had been apologised to enough. 

“I get it.” 

The young girl learned against the counter. 

“I get it. I sorta came to terms with it all after Nevada. Sorta comes with the territory of…” She gestured at Sigma’s head. “All this bullshit.”

“We’re the centre of our own universes, y’know? We make choices and decisions that pull some people in, push others away, and…”

She made an axe-swinging motion.

“And I understand. You and Akane had a moral imperative. Maybe you were right. Maybe, I don’t know, maybe the Earth was meant to burn, maybe this is where I’m meant to be, in your head, I can talk to Light but I can’t see the future. Somebody wanted this, even if it’s not me. I was collateral. When people can shape their own futures like we can, everyone in your timeline has to buckle in for the ride.”

Clover spoke with the maturity he didn’t expect for a 19 year old. If she was 19, he honestly wasn’t sure. 

“I just want my own universe back.”

Through all of this, Sigma was silent. He desperately wanted to say something, he wanted to apologise, make amends, because Clover was right. She had been dragged into his timeline: a looping mess he and Akane had created to make a new future. She was no longer part of her own. Her own story was not this one.

“I want to go to a fucking store. Watch a fucking film, I don’t know. I don’t want to be a side character, enabling your timeline. I want to have a fucking life.”

With a deep breath, she walked to the door, and stood there with her back to Sigma.

“I’m going to live for myself, and for Light, and for Alice. I hope you were successful, Sigma.”

Before he could respond, apologise, beg for forgiveness, she left.

\--------------

Days passed, and the people of Rhizome-9 disappeared. Eventually only Phi, Sigma, Akane, and Luna remained. Well, and Lagomorph, but Sigma hadn’t quite made the bunny gaulem frame for them yet. 

They had eaten meals together, although there was little for Sigma to talk about now. They were 240,000 miles from Tenmyouji’s crossroads. This place they were living in was a sign of the tomorrow they worked so hard to achieve, and a tomorrow that never came true. Every day was today, never tomorrow.

Akane eventually confronted his silence.

“Dr. Klim, I’m scared for you.”

It was easy to tell when Akane was serious, she had the same look that day as when they first met after Dcom. She had it when she told him she’d have to die in the Ambidex Game. She had it when she told him he’d have to die, too. Luna and Phi were with them, but silent.

“6 billion died, Klim.” It would have to take some used to hearing her call him that again. “But we did it. Young you and young Phi went back, we get to try all of this again. In another time, another life, we are stood on Earth and everything is fine.

“But not this one. This one, we live with what happened. Not because someone has to, not because I want to, I promise I’m not so noble.

“We do it because there’s nothing more to do. We spent our lives working towards this moment, Klim, and we did it. We did something insane, and impossible, and we’re living here on the goddamn moon.”

She placed a hand on his arm.

“We’re here, and we’re alive. We have nothing to hold us back now. No more death games, or cults, or anything like that. No more mysteries.”

He nodded, and searched for the right words. Phi was the one who found them.

“For once, Sigma, you need to be selfish. This goes for you too, Akane. You are the smartest people I’ve ever known. Sigma, you mastered artificial intelligence and quantum computing, for fuck sake. You’re one of the greatest scientists humanity has ever had the privilege of witnessing.

“But when did you last do something for yourself? When did you last create something that wasn’t for this game?”

She sat back in her chair.

“I’m young. I have so much ahead of me, so much to learn, so much room to grow, so much for you to teach me. And everyone who was here you helped home, or to some sort of home. Dio doesn’t really count. Circus twat. 

“Anyway, you set up this event, you got people home, this isn’t a sad ending. We fucked up in Dcom, but we knew we would. Like I said, we can’t erase the past, but we can create a new future. We did that. And everyone here, everyone who was here is leading a life now. Even Kyle, or, well, y’know.

“So you need to, too. Sigma, Akane, you spent your lives creating a future you wanted to live in, but, since we’re all here, since this is very much my future…”

She took their hands.

“Maybe make something of this one too?”


End file.
